Valve has made available quarter-scale Headcrab plushie toys, our favorite lovable, cute alien that zombifies everyone. The legs can hook onto objects and made to pose, or set to pounce on unsuspecting puny humans. The toy will set you back $25.
Archive for the 'General' Category
April 29th, 2006
April 28th, 2006
A humorous look at a pebble and what it’d look like in certain games. From Kotaku.
Here is something new, a screensaver that is a game, called The Endless Forest. I have no idea what to categorize the game as. It has you playing a male deer, a stag, roaming through a peaceful forest with other people who are playing the game online. You can only communicate with each other through sounds and body language. The download weighs in at 51MB.
Here’s what the creators have to say about their game:
We don’t really hate computer games. We spend lots of time with many of them. There’s many things we like about games. But sadly there’s also many things that we don’t like. Interactive media, and especially real-time 3D technologies, have so much more to offer than the childish games that form the bulk of the offer today. The Endless Forest is an attempt for us to try and do something with these technologies that does not need to inherit all those things that we don’t like in games.
So if you’re an avid gamer, there’s a big chance that The Endless Forest is not for you. It is not designed to offer any challenges that need to be overcome, or points that can be scored. It’s is much more freeform than that. It’s probably a little bit like a nice painting. You can stare at it for hours a keep discovering new things. And best of all, you can be part of the picture and new things can appear at any time.
Senator Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa wants to slap a 5% tax on videogames. The result would raise $65 million every two years and be designated for building new schools and upgrading schools in poor conditions.
“You have all these kids buying video games, and sometimes they are good, some are bad and that’s not my call,” Hinojosa said. “But I think that we can generate (money) to put toward the schools they go to.”
I have a better idea. Why don’t we tax politicans who get tax exemption and special benefits, and receive huge payments for sitting around thinking up hare-brained ideas such as these. I bet you could raise even more money to build and repair schools that way. If a bill such as this did pass, and videogames had a tax on it, I guarantee you you’d see piracy rise.
April 27th, 2006
Yesterday we reported the unveiling of EA Spouse, the lady who uncovered a brutal policy at Electronic Arts of overworking their programmers developing games without pay. Now Gamasutra has word that a class-action lawsuit about the incident was won by the programmers and EA have to pay a $14.9 million settlement. Mere pocket change for the giant, but hopefully it’ll work out for everyone.
According to the new settlement, some of the entry level programmers will be reclassified as hourly workers, making them eligible for overtime pay. In return, they will be allowed a one time grant of restricted company stock, but will no longer receive stock options or bonuses.
April 26th, 2006
In November 2004, an anonymous blog post from a spouse whose husband worked for the publisher, Electronic Arts, brought to light the harsh overtime working conditions that some were experiencing working under EA. It provoked a chain reaction that spawned lawsuits, changes in the industry, and a backlash of anger towards EA.
Now Mercury News has the true identity of the EA Spouse, and reveals more details about the incident and how it changed working conditions almost overnight.
So Hoffman, then 23, poured out her frustration — under the pen name EA Spouse — in a November 2004 blog that resonated so strongly with other video game developers that it helped spark an employee uprising inside EA and six lawsuits for unpaid overtime against three of the industry’s most prominent employers.
The result of all of this is GameWatch.org, a site where developers can go to swap stories about the companies they work for.
Microsoft wants a piece of the advertising pie so they are looking to buy Massive Inc. Massive is the advertising firm responsible for pushing ads inside game worlds. If you played Anarchy Online or Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, you may remember seeing ads for soda pops, movies, and more while running around in the world. Microsoft looks to cough up mere pocket change — between $200 to $400 million for the company. Rumor has it that they will use ads in games to make money, and possibly make Xbox Live free.
Whatever the case may be, look for a massive push for ads in your games.
April 25th, 2006
Wired.com is infatuated with Lara Croft, and they let us know why she’s back in our hearts again. It doesn’t have to do with her looks, but how men identify with her now. Beware, psychoanalyzing babble inside (although it does raise some good points.)
I beg to differ. I think young boy gamers loved Lara for reasons that were considerably stranger. They weren’t just ogling her: They were identifying with her. Playing the role of a hot, sexy woman in peril — surrounded by violence on all sides — was, unexpectedly, a totally electric experience for young guys.
I am not merely pulling this argument out of my butt. I’m basing it on a famous piece of film theory: the “Final Girl” concept of slasher movies.
April 22nd, 2006
How many times have you bought a game, only to discover it is a bug-ridden infested piece of crap, and shortly after the release of the game a slew of patches come out to clean it up? It has happened quite often over the years, and GameDaily think it’s an accepted practice with publishers and we as gamers should’t accept it. They list Oblivion as a prime example, which I disagree with personally, but they get their point across on an issue we need to address.
Ion Storm could also make quite a game. If you look at Thief: Deadly Shadows, it is very obvious there is a high quality game with some stellar creators. However, the game’s release form was plagued with little problems that caused it lowered review scores. All of the problems could have easily been found and fixed in minimal play testing time. Little bugs like the difficulty mode setting going back to its default every time you load the game, or some sporadic clipping should have been spotted before it ever even got to a beta stage.
I think developers are the victims of this practice as much as the gamers are. Publishers set about time-tables for release on a game, and due to investors, financial, and time constraints, a game is pushed out much to the dismay of developers before it is even ready. A great example of this is Planet Moon’s excellent Giants: Citizen Kabuto game. Interplay, the publisher, pushed the game out way too early, and it was far from finished, and included a game-stopping bug that was well known, but wasn’t fixed before the publisher got greedy and pushed the game out the door. It is a shame it takes place, and I think something should be done about it, as does GameDaily’s editorial.
April 21st, 2006
The Annenberg Studies on Computer Games Group (The ASC Group) are looking for some gamers to provide their input in the name of science in a survey. They classify themselves as “an interdisciplinary research team that seeks to conduct transdisciplinary, systematic and innovative research about the impact of computer game-playing on individuals, groups, and society at large.” The organization is “particularly eager to investigate opportunities for education through the involvement in games.”
If you participate in a study, you may have a chance to win a $60 Amazon gift certificate in a random drawing. Which they’ll hope you buy good stuff with, and not guns or knives.
With E3 fever catching on, developers are handing out screenshots of their new games like candy. Here’s some to check out:
April 20th, 2006
With the hullaboo that has been happening with Bethesda Softwork’s micro-content situation (horse armor and Orrery mods), they have been taking a hit in the corporate image department lately. Dubious Quality thinks they should take a note from Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA basketball team, and straighten up their business philosophy.
Sure, they need to make a profit, every company does, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of a blockbuster title such as Oblivion, especially not in a new area such as micro-content that aren’t free.
Come on, Bethesda. Think. You’re not trying to get people to buy one or two add-ons. You’re trying to create an environment where people will buy all of them. And you’re blowing it. Because it doesn’t matter if 100,000 people bought the horse armor. What matters is how many people buy the fiftieth download, and the hundredth, and you’re headed in the wrong direction. Fast.
April 19th, 2006
1UP continues their interview from the Computer Gaming World magazine interview with the Penny Arcade guys. They talk about how they got clout in the industry now, their popular webcomic, going to E3, and more.
CGW: You have a whole lot more clout than you used to. Do you find that opens a lot more doors?
JH: Yeah, well, I mean, we certainly get…we’re on a lot of press release and PR type lists now, so games start to come to the office. That’s definitely nice. We don’t really try to go into a lot of doors, so now that they’re open to us, we don’t really notice, I don’t think. We pretty much just play games and draw the comic.
GameDailyBiz takes a look at episodic gaming and what it entails for the future of the gaming industry. With content like Half-Life 2’s sequel, Episode One, and the SiN episode series, with the first being Emergence, we’re starting to see game developers switch to games that are shorter, cost less, but are released more rapidly.
“For many, we are approaching an era of staccato gaming - an intermittent gaming life where fragments of game experiences cohere to fulfill a story. These game experiences can be discontinuous, sporadic, disconnected even (for example, a Deathmatch), casual, scattered, sometimes seasonal. In other words, these game experiences become episodic - often not as a function of a game’s story arc and structure, but what frees and steals our time.”
April 18th, 2006
The NPD Group has released the latest Top 10 Best-Selling PC Games list, and for the 3rd week in a row, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is at the top spot.
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2K Games)
- World of Warcraft (Blizzard)
- The Sims 2 Open for Business (Electronic Arts)
- The Sims 2 (Electronic Arts)
- Star Wars: Empire at War (LucasArts)
- Age of Empires III (Microsoft)
- Battlefield 2 (Electronic Arts)
- The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II (Electronic Arts)
- Civilization IV (2K Games)
- The Godfather (Electronic Arts)
Recent Comments